For a bit of a background for non-German folks and particularly Australians... that's a "government-run", "federal" broadcaster publishing this. Sounds like sho

For a bit of a background for non-German folks and particularly Australians... that's a "government-run", "federal" broadcaster publishing this. Sounds like shooting your own foot? No. The Basic Law of Germany, approved by the Western allies in 1949, included telecommunications as a responsibility of the federal government. And so the federal government thought to create a television service to compete with those of the states. The states sued and won in the constitutional court - saying that telecommunications only referred to infrastructure and delivery, definitely not the content (think fascism and communism as to why). The resulting corpse was used by the states as a foundation for a new broadcaster formed through a state treaty. Germany is part of the EU and thus Frontex. The individual states of Germany organised a sister organisation, ZDF, to the Federal Republic of Germany itself and it isn't. One reason I mention all this is because we've got a broken media environment unlike Germany here in Australia with a vast amount of media concentration. And the constitutionality of the ABC is based on the constitution saying that telephones and the postal service fall under the responsibility of the federal government. The ABC isn't Australia Post or Telstra. Yet somehow we all just went along with the premise. So this is what happened here in a similar situation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_Files_(Australia) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_Files_(Australia) - a police raid, the federal government applying pressure and a chilling effect for all future publications. The top three options in Australia for a 'stop the boats' leak like this would be 1. a broadcaster under a massive _chilling_ _effect_ by the 'stop the boats' government, 2. Rupert Murdoch or 3. Nine, with Costello in charge, who was literally the deputy 'stop the boats' guy. Horrifying. So when I see comments like > It's really worrying that there's some concentrated effort to take Frontex down. No, this leak comes from the constituent states of Germany being concerned by a "superior" power doing things that they haven't been authorised to do. Whether it's the Federal Republic of Germany deciding to start a public broadcaster despite the states (and Allied powers) not having agreed to that being its responsibility or whether it's the European Union starting a military (which it's not allowed to do) it's the same thing. It might be a concentrated effort, whatever - it doesn't matter - because it's a constitutional necessity. This leak here is an extremely important part of the process that all "inferior" constituent parts of something should engage in to keep the greater parts in check. Something the constituent states of Australia should take more seriously.